Webinar IRISCAT- Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny "COVID-19 vaccines: from the R&D race to mass vaccination"

To date, multiple COVID-19 vaccines have received full registration or authorizations for emergency use and many countries have initiated vaccination campaigns. Through publication of results of Phase 1 and 3 clinical trials and of real-world effectiveness evaluation in a few countries, many of the scientific questions raised in 2020 have found responses, confirming the hopes that COVID-19 large-scale vaccination will allow the world to bring the pandemic under control.

Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny is Director of Research at Inserm (Paris, France), in charge of the Priority Research Program on Antibiotic Resistance initiated by France in 2019 as part of the Investment Program for the Future. She also represents France on the Management Board of the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance, JPIAMR.

Between March 24 and July 10, 2020, she was a member of the Research and Expertise Analysis Committee (CARE), set up by President Macron, to advise the government on treatments, vaccines and tests against COVID-19. Since June 2020, she chairs the French Scientific Committee on COVID-19 vaccine.

Besides her responsibilities in France, Marie-Paule Kieny is Chair of the Board of the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi, Switzerland) and of the Medicines Patent Pool Foundation (MPPF, Switzerland). She is Vice-Chair of the Board of the Global Antibiotic Research and Development Partnership (GARDP, Switzerland), member of the Board of Directors of the Human Vaccine Project (HVP, USA), of Fondation Mérieux France) and of the Solthis association (France). She is an independent non-executive Director of bioMérieux (France). She participates in the scientific councils of several organizations active in the field of health.

Until June 2017, Dr Kieny served as Assistant Director-General for Health Systems and Innovation at the World Health Organization. Her leadership at WHO included coordinating WHO's R&D efforts during the Ebola epidemic in West Africa from 2014 to 2016 and she conceptualized the WHO R&D Blueprint, a global preparedness plan for emerging disease outbreaks. Prior to joining WHO, Marie-Paule Kieny held leading research positions in the public and private sectors in France.